The Shockwave Rider Read Online Free PDF Page B

calling this amazing talent ‘not especially remarkable’!”
    “But it isn’t.” Freeman leaned back in his padded chair. “Not by our standards, at any rate.”
    “That’s just it,” Hartz muttered. “ Your standards. Sometimes they don’t seem altogether …”
    “Human?”
    Hartz nodded.
    “Oh, but I assure you they are. We’re a very gifted species. Most of what we’re doing here is concerned with the recovery of talents we’ve neglected. We’ve been content to remain shockingly ignorant about some of our most precious mental resources. Until we’ve plugged those gaps in our knowledge, we can’t plan our path toward the future.” He glanced at his watch. “I think we’ve had enough for today. I’ll call the nurse and have him taken away for feeding and cleansing.”
    “That worries me, too. Hearing you speak about him in—in such depersonalized terms. While I admire your thoroughness, your dedication, I have reservations about your methods.”
    Freeman rose, stretching slightly as he did so to relieve his cramped limbs.
    “We use those methods which we’ve found to work, Mr. Hartz. Moreover, please recall we’re dealing with a criminal, a deserter who, if he’d had the chance, would willingly have evolved into a traitor. There are other people engaged in projects similar to ours, and some of them are not just single-minded but downright brutal. I’m sure you wouldn’t wish people of that stamp to outstrip us.”
    “Of course not,” Hartz said uncomfortably, running his finger around his collar as though it had suddenly grown too tight.
    Freeman smiled. The effect was that of a black turnip-ghost.
    “Shall I have the pleasure of your company tomorrow?”
    “No, I have to get back to Washington. But—uh …”
    “Yes?”
    “What did he do after leaving Toledo in such a hurry?”
    “Oh, he took a vacation. Very sensible. In fact, the best thing he could possibly have done.”
     
    FOR PURPOSES OF RE-IDENTIFICATION
     
    At present I am being Sandy (short, as I admit to people when I get stonkered and confidential, not for good old Alexander but for Lysander, of all things!) P. (worse yet, for Pericles !!!) Locke, aged thirty-two, swingle and in view of my beardless condition probably skew. However, I’m trying to give that up and might even consider getting married one of these years.
    I shall remain Sandy Locke for a while at least, even after I finish my vacation at this resort hotel in the Georgia Sea Islands, medium-fashionable, not so boringly up-to-the-second as some even if it does boast an underwater wing for womb-retreat therapy and the manager is a graduate psychologist. At least there’s no obligatory experiential R&P.
    It’s my second vacation this year and I shall take at least one further in late fall. But I’m among people who aren’t likely to mistake “taking another vacation” for “surpled and unemployable,” as some would that I can think of. Many of my fellow guests are taking their third this year already and plan to make the total five. These latter, though, are considerably older, shut of the care and cost of kids. To be a triple-vacationer at thirty-two marks me as a comer … in all three senses. Right now the third kind matters; I need a job.
    I’ve picked a good age, not so difficult as forty-six to put on when you’re chronologically twenty-eight (the sudden recollection of spectacles! Ow!) and youthful enough to attract the middlers while being mature enough to impress the teeners. Memo to selves :could thirty-two be stretched until I’m actually, say, thirty-six? Keep eyes and ears ajar for data.
     
    WINED AND DENIED
     
    Past forty but not saying by how much, beautiful and apt to stay so for a long while yet, currently looking her best by reason of a bright brown tan, hair bleached by sun instead of shampoo, and an hour more sleep per night than she’d enjoyed for ages, Ina Grierson was also tough. Proof lay in the fact that she was heading